Converts to Limnor's Book of Mormon Origins?

[Limnor]

Interestingly, between 1824 and 1828, the contemporary record shows very little direct public talk by Joseph himself about “plates.” I’m happy to be corrected, but of what we know comes from later recollections or from people who said they heard about the discovery secondhand.

This doesn’t prove he never said it—just that the language of “plates” enters the record indirectly and retrospectively, consistent with a view that the metallic-record imagery crystallized after the fact rather than being part of an open, consistent narrative from the beginning.

[malkie]

Let’s consider some additional facts and analysis:

Emma gave that description fifty years later, after decades of living inside a community where “gold plates” were the foundational image.

Over time, episodic memory (the raw tactile feeling) tends to fade, while semantic memory (the story and its words) stays active.

That means when she reached for language in 1879, it is plausible that she explained a combination of real sensory fragments with the dominant narrative she’d heard repeated for half a century, and may well have merged the “rustle” of her memory with the metallic imagery everyone had come to associate with the plates.

I wouldn’t characterize that as a deliberate invention meant to mislead, but I might consider it “reconstructive recall”—memories reshaped to fit later meaning.

If I recall correctly, there's good reason, from research, to believe that all but our most recent memories are such an amalgam.

[huckelberry]

There is now a lot of research into how and why eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. It becomes exponentially more unreliable when they eye witness testimony is coordinated by a single, interested, authority figure.

In the lost-in-the-mall study, implantation of false memory occurred when another person, usually a family member, claimed that the incident happened. Corroboration of an event by another person can be a powerful technique for instilling a false memory. In fact, merely claiming to have seen a person do something can lead that person to make a false confession of wrongdoing.
This effect was demonstrated in a study by Saul M. Kassin and his colleagues at Williams College, who investigated the reactions of individuals falsely accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong key. The innocent participants initially denied the charge, but when a confederate said that she had seen them perform the action, many participants signed a confession, internalized guilt for the act and went on to confabulate details that were consistent with that belief. These findings show that false incriminating evidence can induce people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit and even to develop memories to support their guilty feelings.
Research is beginning to give us an understanding of how false memories of complete, emotional and self-participatory experiences are created in adults. First, there are social demands on individuals to remember; for instance, researchers exert some pressure on participants in a study to come up with memories. Second, memory construction by imagining events can be explicitly encouraged when people are having trouble remembering. And, finally, individuals can be encouraged not to think about whether their constructions are real or not. Creation of false memories is most likely to occur when these external factors are present, whether in an experimental setting, in a therapeutic setting or during everyday activities.

False memories are constructed by combining actual memories with the content of suggestions received from others. During the process, individuals may forget the source of the information. This is a classic example of source confusion, in which the content and the source become dissociated.
Of course, because we can implant false childhood memories in some individuals in no way implies that all memories that arise after suggestion are necessarily false. Put another way, although experimental work on the creation of false memories may raise doubt about the validity of long-buried memories, such as repeated trauma, it in no way disproves them. Without corroboration, there is little that can be done to help even the most experienced evaluator to differentiate true memories from ones that were suggestively planted.

https://staff.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

In the case of Joseph’s witnesses, grouping them together actually makes the chance of “false memory” more, not less, likely. 11 unrelated people seeing something similar at 11 different times and places is one thing. But 11 related people, grouped together in one location by a single interested party who leads the statement and even tells them what they “saw”…come on.

If 11 of L. Ron. Hubbard’s close family and friends signed a statement to say that Thetans are real and that they’d seen them, would MG or any other born-in-the-church committed Mormon, or Mormon apologist find that to be compelling evidence for Scientology being the true religion?

Questions, I think you have presented some valuable study here. It touches on both false and manipulated memories. I can see how Joseph could have guided and interpreted what those witness saw and remembered.

I was struck by how the pattern could map how ideas, experiences and perhaps stories of brother Alvin could become the memories and ideas of Joseph.perhaps the angel and plates started as stories with or from Alvin and became memories in Joseph.

This creates space to allow the possibility of some actual belief operating in Joseph. I have thought that expectations and enthusiasm of followers helped push the story along. Thinking of Alvin suggests a starting push of suggestion hope and enthusiasm as well.

[Marcus]

Questions, I think you have presented some valuable study here. It touches on both false and manipulated memories. I can see how Joseph could have guided and interpreted what those witness saw and remembered.

I was struck by how the pattern could map how ideas, experiences and perhaps stories of brother Alvin could become the memories and ideas of Joseph.perhaps the angel and plates started as stories with or from Alvin and became memories in Joseph.

This creates space to allow the possibility of some actual belief operating in Joseph...

I think that's a very generous interpretation, as it implies that Smith's beliefs, however sincere, might have led him to misappropriate another's stories and ideas. It seems more likely that it was intentional on Smith's part, and he was taking advantage of a tragic situation.

[MG 2.0]

[ I think you have presented some valuable study here. It touches on both false and manipulated memories. I can see how Joseph could have guided and interpreted what those witness saw and remembered.

I was struck by how the pattern could map how ideas, experiences and perhaps stories of brother Alvin could become the memories and ideas of Joseph.perhaps the angel and plates started as stories with or from Alvin and became memories in Joseph.

This creates space to allow the possibility of some actual belief operating in Joseph. I have thought that expectations and enthusiasm of followers helped push the story along. Thinking of Alvin suggests a starting push of suggestion hope and enthusiasm as well.

You are left to deal with the fact that none of the witnesses ever recanted their testimony, even when estranged from the Church. You also have to say that the witnesses who claimed to handle the plates were lying. Also, multiple witnesses gave independent interviews to newspapers, critics, and historians throughout their lives. The accounts were remarkably consistent.

There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults, especially when those memories involve physical interaction with an object.

The whole Alvin hypothesis runs up against some hard knocks going against it. I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again, when we look at things in isolation or in a limited fashion of viewing we may miss the larger picture.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

...There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults, especially when those memories involve physical interaction with an object...

Mental gymnast will need to ask his AI for confirmation of this AI cut-and-paste. As it stands, it's an opinion with no supporting evidence.

[I Have Questions]

There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults…

Wrong. Very wrong.

The Mandela effect comes into play when these constructions of recollections that feel authentic, yet deviate from actual events, happen at the collective level—where large groups of people recall the same baseless fact or event. Mandela’s false death in the '80s is only a single example of this, and many more have been identified since the term was coined.

For example, almost everyone has played the classic family board game, Monopoly. Upon being asked to describe Mr. Monopoly, the man on the cover of the box, many would describe an older gentleman with a cane, a top hat, and a monocle. However, not a single iteration of Monopoly has included him wearing a monocle, yet countless people swear by this memory.

Similarly, many will confidently recall the classic cartoon film series “Looney Toons,” the series “Sex in the City,” and Darth Vader’s classic line, “Luke, I am your father.” In reality, the show is spelled Looney Tunes, the series is called Sex and the City, and the line goes, “No, I am your father.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ories-work

MG, don’t you get fed up of making baseless assertions that are easily shown to be completely false? Perhaps if you did a modicum of research to see if what you are about to say has any grounding in reality you might avoid the embarrassment of being shown to be laughably wrong at every turn. It’s like you just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head.

[malkie]

I think you have presented some valuable study here. It touches on both false and manipulated memories. I can see how Joseph could have guided and interpreted what those witness saw and remembered.

I was struck by how the pattern could map how ideas, experiences and perhaps stories of brother Alvin could become the memories and ideas of Joseph.perhaps the angel and plates started as stories with or from Alvin and became memories in Joseph.

This creates space to allow the possibility of some actual belief operating in Joseph. I have thought that expectations and enthusiasm of followers helped push the story along. Thinking of Alvin suggests a starting push of suggestion hope and enthusiasm as well.

You are left to deal with the fact that none of the witnesses ever recanted their testimony, even when estranged from the Church. You also have to say that the witnesses who claimed to handle the plates were lying. Also, multiple witnesses gave independent interviews to newspapers, critics, and historians throughout their lives. The accounts were remarkably consistent.

Consistency per se is not necessarily a plus. The witnesses were not independent of each other, and their experiences happened in groups of three and eight.

Their testimonies also were not their own individual statements: they each "signed on" to a statement that had been created for them - or perhaps by them as a group.

It's worth noting, I think, that there's a good reason why, when police arrest several people, or call several in for questioning, they try to isolate them from each other. There's a valid concern that, given the opportunity, they may collaborate on a story that is consistent, but that none of them may have come up with on their own. Group pressure may also cause reluctant witnesses/suspects to "go along" with the group consensus, or the story proposed by the stronger members of the group. The group members then internalise the story.

Repetition of a statement, accurate or not, tends to cement it in the memory of the person making the statement.

You, MG, have complained on this board about people putting words in your mouth. It can be argued that the pre-written statement(s) put words in the mouths of all of the witnesses.

There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults, especially when those memories involve physical interaction with an object.

"limited evidence" = "not impossible", right? Many of your statements on this board fall into that category, often preceded by a hypothetical.

I don't think that I've come across any critic who denies that the two groups of witnesses experienced something, but it's far from clear that all of them had a "physical interaction with an object". It's also not clear if the eight witnesses encountered the same object as the three, or any other later unofficial witnesses.

As previously noted, what limited interaction any may have had with a physical object left them unable to say much about what the object was. The eight said that the plates were of ancient, curious workmanship, but none was qualified in any way to attest to their ancient nature.

The whole Alvin hypothesis runs up against some hard knocks going against it. I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again, when we look at things in isolation or in a limited fashion of viewing we may miss the larger picture.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

[ I think you have presented some valuable study here. It touches on both false and manipulated memories. I can see how Joseph could have guided and interpreted what those witness saw and remembered.

I was struck by how the pattern could map how ideas, experiences and perhaps stories of brother Alvin could become the memories and ideas of Joseph.perhaps the angel and plates started as stories with or from Alvin and became memories in Joseph.

This creates space to allow the possibility of some actual belief operating in Joseph. I have thought that expectations and enthusiasm of followers helped push the story along. Thinking of Alvin suggests a starting push of suggestion hope and enthusiasm as well.

You are left to deal with the fact that none of the witnesses ever recanted their testimony, even when estranged from the Church. You also have to say that the witnesses who claimed to handle the plates were lying. Also, multiple witnesses gave independent interviews to newspapers, critics, and historians throughout their lives. The accounts were remarkably consistent.

There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults, especially when those memories involve physical interaction with an object.

The whole Alvin hypothesis runs up against some hard knocks going against it. I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again, when we look at things in isolation or in a limited fashion of viewing we may miss the larger picture.

Regards,
MG

As an add on:

Mandela Effect examples are typically passive, semantic, and observational—not tactile, sensorimotor, or physically interactive. They’re not based on direct physical interaction, no one is recalling touching Mr. Monopoly or handling a Looney Tunes reel. This is especially relevant to Book of Mormon witnesses who claimed to have handled the plates. All in all, including the original witnesses, there were twelve people who claimed to have seen or handled the plates.

Again, what I said was, "There’s limited evidence that a charismatic leader can implant shared, enduring, and consistent false memories in multiple adults, especially when those memories involve physical interaction with an object."

It might be a challenge for someone to find examples of experimental evidence showing that a person can cause a group of adults to form shared, consistent, tactile false memories, especially ones that persist for decades and are reaffirmed under scrutiny.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

The eight said that the plates were of ancient, curious workmanship, but none was qualified in any way to attest to their ancient nature.

That is true. There statement was testimonial rather than technical. It sort of comes down to whether or not they were considered to be honest, consistent, and never recanted that testimony. Including the other three beyond the eight.

Regards,
MG